Make words stand out in a document with Microsoft Office Word

Of all ways to make words stand out on a page, the easiest is highlighting text. Using the Microsoft Office Word 2007 Highlight command, create different exercises to help students understand concepts and how words function within a sample document.

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Create exercises using highlights

  • Identify grammatical structure and parts of speech. Using Office Word 2007, students highlight words and phrases in a worksheet. They can use different highlight colors to identify verbs, nouns, prepositional phrases, subjects, weekly spelling words, incorrect sentence structure, and inappropriate use of words.
  • Rewrite a section or find a substitute. Using Office Word 2007 or a paper worksheet, students replace highlighted words or phrases. For example, you could create a worksheet containing highlighted adjectives that are used incorrectly. Students can find the highlighted words and replace them with more appropriate words or with words from the weekly spelling list. Or a worksheet could ask students to rewrite highlighted sections or phrases.
  • Guess the word or meaning. Students get a worksheet that contains a story with key words hidden with black highlighting. Students read the story and then guess the missing words or try to derive the meaning of the story. Students can check their answers by turning off highlighting.
    You can make words stand out in a paragraph by increasing the size and using a different color.
  • Highlighting is also an easy way for you to mark up student assignments. For example, you could use red highlight to quickly point out errors. If you want to add more detail, you can use the Comments feature on the Review tab.

In addition to the Highlight command, you can use font formatting to make words stand out. For example, increase the size and change the color of some text and then save the new formatting as a Quick Style. Then, you can quickly add the style to more text. To help you and your students work with highlighting, you can use the Find and Replace commands to locate and replace text that is highlighted.

Make words stand out with the Highlight command

Highlighting is a quick and easy way to make words stand out.

Select the text you want to highlight. Then, on the Home tab in the Font group, click the arrow next to the Text Highlight Color button, and click a color. The highlight appears on all selected text.

Make words stand out with a Quick Style

  1. Select the text that you want to highlight.
  2. On the Home tab in the Font group, select formatting options. For example, click the Bold and Grow Font buttons. Click the dialog box launcher for more options. For example, you can add an effect, such as Embossing or Shadow.
  3. Right-click the selected text, point to Styles, and then click Save Selection as a New Quick Style.
  4. Type a name for the style, and click OK.
  5. To use the style, select some text. Then, on the Home tab in the Styles group, open the Style Gallery, and select the new style. Use the CTRL key to make multiple selections, and then click the style command to apply the new style to all selected text at once.

Teacher Tips

   

  • For a fun, creative exercise, distribute an excerpt from a short story to your class.

    You can hide key words using "black" highlighting color. As students read sentences aloud have the class suggest or guess the hidden word. See what twists and turns in meaning that the story takes.

Make words stand out with formatting and Format Painter

  1. Format a word, and then select it.
    The cursor changes to show you that Format Painter is turned on.
  2. On the Home tab in the Clipboard group, double-click Format Painter.
  3. To apply the formatting to a different word, drag the cursor over the word.
  4. Continue to reformat text. When you are finished, click Format Painter again to turn it off.

Find highlighted text

  1. On the Home tab in the Editing group, click Find. (Click Replace if you want to quickly replace highlighted text with different text or formatting.)
  2. Under Find, click Format, and then click Highlight. Under Find what, Highlight is listed next to Format.

  3. Click Find Next, and the next highlighted text is selected.

    -Or-

  4. Click Find In, and click Main Document to select all highlighted text in the document.

Quickly turn off all highlighted text

  1. Select all text.
  2. Click the arrow next to the Text Highlight Color button, and select No Color.